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A reckoning: Trump's attacks are inspiring self-reflection in higher ed
The Trump administration's attacks against colleges and universities, including its attempts to pull federal funding and bar foreign students from Harvard University in the name of fighting antisemitism, have alarmed many in higher education.
But they have also spurred a degree of self-reflection among some leaders in the field.
There's a 'kernel of truth' in many of the leading criticisms of universities and colleges — the price tag, the perceived liberal bent of many educators, and the rise of campus antisemitism and discrimination — said Ted Mitchell.
Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, a nonpartisan association of 1,600 colleges across the country, said the Trump administration has 'called on higher education' to attend to these issues that have long lingered without sufficient action.
The administration's pressure campaign comes at a time when public confidence in the nation's colleges is falling.
Read more: Trump admin renews demand for Harvard foreign student info: 'We tried to do things the easy way'
In the past decade, the share of Americans with high confidence in colleges and universities has fallen from 57% to 36%, primarily driven by concerns that colleges push a political agenda, don't teach necessary skills and cost too much, according to a Gallup survey last year.
Meanwhile, the cost of attending college is growing. Adjusted for inflation, average tuition is up 30-40% over the past 20 years at public and private colleges, according to data gathered by U.S. News and World Report.
While Mitchell agrees with some of the Trump administration's criticisms of higher education, the way the federal government has addressed those concerns — such as cutting off federal funding for research — is overblown, he said.
'His actions have been outrageous and dangerous and missed the point,' Mitchell said.
A Department of Education spokesperson didn't respond to requests for comment for this story.
A leading complaint: Colleges are too liberal
The belief that college campuses have become bastions of a leftist ideology where conservatives are underrepresented has been a central feature in Trump's critiques of higher education.
In an April letter to Harvard, the Trump administration demanded numerous reforms to campus admissions, hiring and management practices.
The administration said Harvard must review programs and departments that 'fuel antisemitic harassment' and make changes to expand ideological diversity on campus.
Among Americans dissatisfied with higher education, 41% believe colleges push a political agenda, Gallup's poll last year showed. It was the top issue, followed at 37% by those who said colleges focus on the wrong things and don't teach relevant skills.
Those respondents were more than three times as likely to believe colleges were too liberal than too conservative.
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Any 'clear-minded observer of higher education' would agree that academia has skewed further to the left, Mitchell said.
'Viewpoint diversity is always at risk in every discipline and it really comes home when departments become homogenous around any set of ideas,' he said.
For instance, Mitchell said there are too few conservative academics championing free-market capitalism in economics departments and that there is excessive emphasis in the humanities on anticolonialism, a political and social movement seeking to end colonial rule across the globe.
Robert Shibley, special counsel for campus advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, raised similar concerns about the lack of political diversity in higher education.
'It's a perennial complaint and I think lies behind a lot of the animosity toward Harvard and other schools,' he said.
The nonpartisan free speech group based in Washington, D.C., has urged colleges and universities in recent years to take those concerns seriously.
Yet adjusting the ideological diversity on campus is outside the government's purview, not to mention a tricky endeavor, Shibley said. For one, 'You can't just wave a wand' and generate 'a whole bunch of conservative academics waiting in the wings.'
Academia may be politically left of the American public, yet in theory it should not matter, said Dr. Greg Weiner, president of Assumption University in Worcester.
'I've often said I don't know who our faculty votes for,' he said. 'For all I know, they 100% could have voted for Biden, 100% could have voted for Trump, and I would not care as long as they're excellent teachers and scholars.'
But on many campuses, politics have increasingly seeped into lesson plans, he said.
Read more: 'Devastating': 10 Harvard researchers detail 'essential' work set to be cut by Trump
Educators would benefit from limiting 'extraneous material' from the classroom, even in subjects such as political thought — Weiner's area of expertise — with a connection to current events, he said. Doing so may help break the public perception that colleges have become overly political.
'Rather than locking into a position that would require us to persuade significant majorities of the American public that they're simply wrong, let's start by taking a hard look at ourselves,' he said.
Antisemitism has been a longstanding issue
In April, under intense pressure from Trump to address campus antisemitism, Harvard acknowledged it had failed to effectively combat discrimination against Jewish students and staff amid Israel's war in Gaza.
Jews of varying political stripes were shunned, harassed, targeted in class discussions, and generally fearful to discuss their identity, a report released in April from a Harvard task force found. The same patterns existed on campuses across the country.
Accompanying the report, Harvard President Alan Garber issued an apology: 'I am sorry for the moments when we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community.'
Antisemitism festered on campuses for years before the war began with Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, Jewish community leaders say.
Read more: Trump admin threatens Harvard's accreditation over antisemitism response
Discrimination of Jews steadily swelled on college campuses through the early 2000s and 2010s as the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians deteriorated and as campus advocacy around the conflict intensified, said Steven Schimmel, the executive director of the Jewish Federation of Central Massachusetts.
By the time Hamas attacked Israel, the issue had already become 'precipitously worse' than in decades prior, he said. It has since only deteriorated further.
It took pressure from the White House and Congress, Jewish organizations, alumni and students for college leaders to realize that antisemitism was rapidly escalating, Schimmel said.
Much like their Jewish and Israeli peers, students of Muslim, Arab and Palestinian descent were also subject to a climate of 'fear and intimidation' as campus tensions flared, another report from Harvard found.
The university did too little to combat discrimination or support students on both sides of the conflict, it said.
While college leaders have largely grasped the need for action and taken it, important steps are still needed, Schimmel said. Universities must enforce their antidiscrimination rules effectively. And they should ensure that broader perspectives on issues related to Israel are taught in the classroom, he said.
Read more: Trump's antisemitism probe mostly relies on Harvard's own report, Harvard claims
Trump has made clear that failure from Harvard to act against antisemitism could have grave consequences.
'There are plenty of members of the Jewish community who welcome the added focus of combating antisemitism,' Schimmel said. Yet there is also trepidation, he added, over what the fallout of Trump's approach could be, and whether more targeted actions to combat antisemitism would be more effective.
'Tremendous room for improvement'
A college degree still presents a clear pathway to financial mobility, yet higher education has 'tremendous room' to improve free speech, counter campus antisemitism and expand the political diversity of faculty, according to Beth Akers, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank.
College education has been 'over-celebrated,' she said, and the Trump administration's focus on the sector feels like a 'necessary correction,' even if it goes too far with cuts to funding.
Read more: 'A day of loss': Boston University to lay off 120 people citing federal funding impacts
The Trump administration's critiques of colleges could spur more people to question whether to pursue a degree, Akers said.
'Getting people to be more cautious about this investment, but not dismissing it entirely, I think, is actually a good innovation,' she said.
Other higher education leaders don't see as much of an upside.
Lynn Pasquerella, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities and a former president at Mount Holyoke College, said the federal government's characterization of colleges and universities is 'disconnected from the reality.'
Pasquerella sees the Trump administration as taking advantage of a growing mistrust of higher education for its own political aims, such as attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
At the same time, she acknowledges that the institution has its faults.
'I believe that the longstanding critiques of higher education — that it's too expensive, too difficult to access, doesn't teach students 21st century skills — need to be addressed and they need to be addressed directly,' she said. 'And it requires a reckoning around the fundamental mission and purposes of American higher education.'
What that reckoning looks like, however, has yet to be realized, she said.
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